How To Utilize Draft Mode in WordPress To Plan Your Blog Schedule

Some people plan out their blogging schedule with calendars or perhaps notebooks, or even with computer word processing software. Did you know you could utilize draft mode in WordPress to plan your blog schedule? Yes… you can!

WordPress has the ability to store posts or pages until you either schedule them to publish, publish them, or remove them. The ability to save drafts allows you to come back to your post later and work on it.

So… how can you utilize draft mode in WordPress to plan your blog schedule?

Simple.

Each week, 2 weeks, or month… however you like to plan posts in bulk, take some time to come up with topics to write about on your blog. In your posts area of your WordPress, add a new post. Just start with the topic you want to talk about. You might even just want to go ahead and write a title out. Then, write a brief summary sentence or whatever ideas you want to cover, and save as draft. There is a button to the right in a box labeled Publish, as seen in the screenshot above.

Create as many posts that you wish to cover over time and you can simply go back to write more later. Even if you like to post 2 or 3 times in a day, you should plan your posts like that.

This is a great way for multi-author blogs to coordinate who is writing what. The main editor can remove or talk with the authors to adjust their topic schedule so no one is writing the same thing.

For people who attend events, this method would keep you on target with what to cover on your blog so that the event is fully covered. I have had clients who are fashion bloggers who do this when they attend Fashion Week and other events. I also do this myself.

Aside from covering events, you can use the draft mode as a general to do list, so if you have already scheduled posts, you can always go back and add more topics from ideas that came by on the fly.

Do you take advantage of the draft mode feature in WordPress to plan your blog schedule?

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About Nile Flores

Nile is a 34 year old female from Southern Illinois. Nile is a mother of 1 son. She is also a web designer and developer, a graphic designer, and a public speaker, who exclusively designs and develops using WordPress. She is currently a student working for a Bachelors in Business. She also blogs at FamousBloggers.net and her very personal site, Pixelled. Click to read more about Nile and Blondish.net

Comments

Hi Nile… A lot of our blog cartoonists are traveling so we often use this technique and it works well – actually it’s not so much using drafts as the wordpress “published on” feature when writing posts… we basically change the published on date to some date in the future so the content automatically drips out over time.

Thank you so much! This is a really good feature. Sometimes i have no time. Sometimes i have time for many articles. This seems to be the solution for my problems This is a great tool that helps me organizing my thoughts in the first place!

Wow, I never thought to use the draft tool as a scheduling system. I think I will definitely do this in the future. Usually, drafts just sit and haunt me and it’s not clear when I will publish the full blog post. This is better for managing a blog.

I really like the idea of being able to schedule post in advance and it is something I have never understood how to do correctly.

Sometimes I do have tow or three posts that I would like to write at a particular time, and using this simple technique – well, simple if you know how to do it right – is going to help me when I set up more than one post at a time. Thank you for this really simple explanation.

Very informative post. Wordpress is such a great CMS for bloggers who sometimes doesn’t have the time finish all the articles. Good thing that there is always a feature that will help all the blogger’s need.

Ah! I didn’t know that ‘draft’ was actually on option. That’s good to know. In the past, I would just schedule them for a week or two in advance and then when I got the chance to go back and finish the post, I’d have to alter the schedule again. It was a pain, but now that I know about this new option…it’ll be smooth sailing. Thanks for the tip!

hmm.. you are absolutely correct the draft options is very helpful, specially when you are in hurry but your post is not complete and at that time the draft feature is most helpful. I just save my post in drafts and complete it after coming to home. And yes it also help me to arrange my post in order , when a series of posts are to be published related to a same topic. Every one must use it to post effective … 😉

Funny that I rarely use draft mode. I often write posts in advance (or write a partial post when an idea hits me); however, I ‘schedule’ them a year out. For example, if I created a new post today, I would schedule it for 2/18/2014. Of course, if I wrote the post in its entirety, I would schedule it a few days out.

Thank You Nile for this post about using Draft mode, to plan a Blog schedule! This is all good information for someone like me, who is pretty new to Blogging…..This information is going to help me keep Blogging fun!…Thanks again!

Hi Nile , I haven’t heard to utilize WordPress drafts feature even before. I love the screenshots guide and I got this one on your blog . This is really very impressive post .Thanks to let me know something new as a newbie blogger .

Nile, excellent point to utilize the draft mode. I use it for all my articles and just any thoughts on subjects. Say when I read one of your articles and it inspires me to write my experience on your subject. I make a not of the key elements that influenced me.

I also leave a little article that may need pictures and keep it there while I take my time to find some. Lots of ways to use it and I am happy you gave us the location.

Thanks Nile your really a great resource for usable information and procedures.

Hi Nile, thank you for explaining this option in WordPress more. Even though I had used the draft option before, I had not considered the possibility of using it to plan my posts that way.Great tip and images to show how!

I do use the draft option, and also post dating a post so it will show up in a day or two. But I haven’t used it for actually planning my posts… I use an email draft on my hard drive for that. Having it all there on my blog where I can see it would be more organized.

Hi, NIle; Great tip…I haven’t used it because I was afraid the draft posts might show up for the bots or even viewers if they use the site search. I know when you make a post Private it shows up…Do you know how to stop this and actually keep something private from display if it is marked private? Great to see what a good resource you are for fellow bloggers. Thanks again. Teresa

Good tip. I typically write a post and the schedule it to post on a certain day. I think that if my readers get used to me publishing each Wednesday and Friday that that is better for them. So if I get reall creative and write 4 post in one day, I’ll spread them out over a couple of weeks.

I like the idea of using the draft feature though. Great way to capture ideas and thoughts and then polish them up later.

Thank You Nile for this post about using Draft mode, to plan a Blog schedule! This is all good information for someone like me, who is pretty new to Blogging…..This information is going to help me keep Blogging fun!

very nice article Nile, the draft mode is a very useful mode of schedule publishing your article into your blog, talking about my self i almost have 3-5 self written articles in the draft so that i could publish them anytime i want.. by the way nice piece of work:)

I actually did this when I first started my blog. I knew that I wanted to target a specific set of keywords to drive targeted traffic from the search engines so I picked out 100 of my first blog posts to write. Now I use this feature when I know what I want to talk about, but feel I need to do more research. Keeps me on topic, and I don’t feel like I have to rush to get out content.

Its great idea, however i found that if you are not posting or writing your idea to post, then you forget and that idea goes to waste. Just my personal experience. My ideas need to be put down to be posted next. Im sure though a lot of people use this method.

Hey Nile, Nice post and Thanks for sharing this post with us. I really like the idea of draft mode in wordpress and yes we can use it when ever we got an idea about our next post but not have proper research about that then we can easily save it into draft.

really draft plays a very important role in making the lyf of a blogger quite relaxed n easy. With it scheduling of the posts can be done n also the raw data for our post can also be saved easily for further use. Very useful info…keep sharing!!!

Excellent post. You really dialed that in. It’s the simple principles that worked for people that have already been where we are heading and desire to be that we should pay close attention to.Thanks for keeping it real and I always look forward to your next post!

I have always used Draft Mode to smooth up a project especially new one’s. The blog post will bring up the idea to jog one’s memory. This is something not given much attention to but a good tool where we can save plans. This is quite a refresher. Thank you!

Draft Mode in WordPress will help you prioritize things to do and needs to accomplish on time. Although the tool helps you store good ideas that instantly pops up aside from scheduling too. It helps us lighten our load. Many will try this tool for sure.

Hey Nile I really like this option in WordPress. Whenever i write a post and i don’t have much time to complete writing then i always use this option and write about that post later. Awesome feature. Chetan Gupta

Hi Nile, Frankly, I enjoy using this feature. I find it is so easy and convenient to come back to my post again to edit or add contents at anytime I want. At many times, I think of few topics I want to blog about and just put each topic on the title section to save them in the draft.

Hey Nile Thanks for solving my irritating problem i tell you how sometimes i have lot of information regarding one post and suddenly i find another great news to post and that situation confuses me alot to what to do at that time. Thanks for awesome tips. These tips are useful for bloggers who want to publish more than 2 posts in a day. 😀

Niles as usual some very helpful information. I think I should use this to plan out my post and have them publish over a specific time period. I have these moments when I have a lot of ideas and then those times when my mind goes blank. Using the scheduler will help me not miss a beat.

That’s really smart. I can’t believe I overlooked that function. It will be a huge time saver because I like to write content and save it in draft mode or in word documents for later use. So much easier to put it all into wordpress with a future post date than type everything in word and then cut and paste back into wordpress when I want it to post. You are quite the genius Nile. Now if only you could tell me blogger has the same function…

The scheduling option is a great way to go for people who like to do their work in batches. It’s definitely the way I roll… I like to sit down for a 3 or 4 hour block of time, schedule out a batch of blog posts, write as much as I can for each of my titles, then on my next blogging time block, complete as needed. Then rinse and repeat for the next batch. I also think working this way gives flow, congruence and context to what you’re writing about.

I use my draft box in several ways. Sometimes I use it for quick points note down, and as well as to draft as many as possible titles for my upcoming blog posts. I schedule posts using the brilliant feature, but in the past I have faced an issue where WordPress failed to publish scheduled posts.

I have often used the Draft mode while working on a post or an article, but I have not used it to set up a schedule or to start writing about topics I plan to finish at some future date. Great suggestion. Thanks.

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